


Dead Men Tell No Tales

by temporalDecay



Series: a distrait life of mistakes [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Chucklevoodoos, Fearmorgering, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 07:17:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Karkat Vantas reaches out to his moirail about bizarre happenings in the world, and Gamzee Makara does what Gamzee Makara does best: be a skeevy son of a bitch.</p><p>No SGRUB AU, post successful coup, featuring Karkat "What The Fuck Is Even Going On" Vantas, Gamzee "Piss Your Pants And Laugh About It Because The World Is Ending" Makara, with bonus cameo by Nepeta "Look At All These Fucks I Don't Give" Leijon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Men Tell No Tales

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a story told from Karkat's POV, Gamzee sort of hijacked the whole thing and decided he wanted to have a say on things.
> 
> It's... well, Gamzee.

He comes to you when the darkness is ready to bloom behind your eyelids, and that’s how you know it _is_ serendipity tying him to you, stretched thin and tenuous like a thread from a spider’s web. It’s fitting, you think; because it was in the cradle of the spider where you found him, truly found him, for what he is and what he means to you, just as you found who you are. He comes to you, when the rites begin to go wrong and your fearmongering starts to overwhelm the fools who want to claim kinship to you. When the paint is fresh and vibrant, and you can smell it in every corner of the ship, the sweet, teasing promise of slaughter in the cackle of the prayers to gods no one really understands. 

You stand in the center of the audience hall and stare up at your Ancestor’s throne without really seeing it for itself. They piled bones and skulls and horns to make it, and there’s a long, tedious passage of scripture describing your Ancestor’s journey and all his battles, and how each and every trophy was gained. There’s something warm and comforting about the throne that feels almost like it was made for you, to give you a place in the world while you watch everything else spin out of control. Sitting in that throne feels like sitting on your lusus’ head, those rare nights the old goat would find his way back to you and take you out for a ride around the coast, before dumping your scrawny needy ass on the sand and sinking back under the waves for another perigee or two. 

“He’s coming,” you say, a low purr as you watch the smug bitch sprawled comfortably on the most sacred relic of your cult. “He’ll be here before you can up and motherfucking say it.” 

She’s a thin line of black against the white of old bones, limbs thick with muscle and eyes slits of the most hateful green you’ve ever known. Sometimes, when you watch her claim ownership of every inch of your ship, so long as you’re the only one around to see, you wish you could set her against the old blood constantly nagging at your heels, purely for the pleasure of watching their rusty old pans melt at the idea of how thoroughly defiled their mysteries are. 

“I was getting bored,” she says, stretching lazily, “anyway.” 

You flashstep up the stairs, club in your hand without any real conscious thought, and slam it down the seat of the throne with enough force to make the old bones creak. She has already landed on the backseat by the time you look up, vaguely disappointed to find no stains of green swill spattered everywhere. You make a halfhearted attempt to grab her, when she leaps at you, grinning as her claws score thin lines along your arm. 

“Enjoy your motherfucking hunt,” you hiss at nothing, as you finish turning and she’s no longer in sight. 

“You too,” the empty block echoes, with the ghost of a purr. 

You let yourself fall back into the throne, laughter bubbling under your ribs, quiet at first, but slowly escalating into a howl of mirth. 

Messiahs be praised, your moirail is coming, you can feel it in your bones. 

  


* * *

  


The _Messiah_ is quiet, as soon as the bridge to the _Leviathan_ is in place. Your people – and it’s still strange, after all these sweeps, to think of them that way – don’t like it when your moirail is aboard. To them, beyond the titles and the politics, he is a mutant and a walking aberration that they wish they could just erase him until not even the bloodstains remain. Even the most faithful, even the ones looming from the highest perches, they don’t understand jackshit about the mysteries they’ve consecrated themselves to. All their pious murder, all their efforts to emulate the righteous rage of your Ancestor; it’s worth nothing because they don’t understand the most basic things about the faith. At the core, Subjugglators embraced the violence and the carnage that your Ancestor preached, but they can’t grasp the reasons behind it. 

The Mirthful Messiahs are not gods of destruction, they’re gods of creation. But the world needs to be destroyed before it can be remade into something better, and hidden in that paradox is the greatest punchline of the universe. Your faith is not about bringing destruction and mayhem to the world. Your faith is about the in-between, the thin lines that connect everything and drag it down a spiral of chaos and rebirth. The whole role of the Subjugglators as enforcers of peace is a prime example of that, you bring harmony with select acts of slaughter, because the world was made in jest and everything in it is a joke of the highest caliber. 

Your Ancestor knew that, knew it like he knew his right hand from the left, and you’re certain because you’ve read his scripture and understood the subtle jabs woven delicately into everything he said and did and left behind. When your brethren paint their faces and sing old ruinous songs and take it upon themselves to massacre the infidels, they are not honoring your gods, like they think they are. They’re perpetuating a mockery of the true faith, watered down and twisted by convenience. 

One day, you’ll set them straight and pull off the ultimate prank, slaughtering the true unfaithful that lie to your face and the signs of your worship, and it will be the most glorious day of all. But that day is not today, and until then, you grin to yourself because they go on, calling themselves howlbeasts when you can see their fangs are nothing more than muddled wool. 

Still, your moirail is coming and the flock of clowns looks like a pack of mimes, sullen and quiet, glowering about in the corners where they think you can’t see. You grin because even now they don’t understand that Karkat is the one holy thing keeping them alive, holding you with a steady hand and making sure you don’t stray before it’s time. You greet him as his _Leviathan_ docks side by side with your _Messiah_ , dwarfing your ship almost the same way you dwarf him. He’s clad in white and red and gold, and it’ll never not be funny to you, that he tried so hard to go unnoticed for so long, that he clung so much to his anonymous grey, only to end up at the center of the stage, forced to wear the colors of the highest office. He comes alone, since no one else dares step under the arches and the shadows of your ship. The scent of blood and murder and incense keeps the cowards at bay, but not your moirail. He’s beautiful like that, standing there, stubbornly refusing to be impressed by the priests and the apostles that flank each step. 

“Gamzee,” he says, in that lovely exasperated tone of his that touches the deepest corners of your soul, and just like that, the screeching dies out and you’re owner of yourself again. 

You bend down to pick him up, arms wrapped up tight around his smaller frame, and it feels like he’s pulsing with the heartbeat of the world. 

“Put me down, you panrotten imbecile,” Karkat demands, but he doesn’t mean it, because his fingers are already digging into the crusted blood in your hair. “You’re a fucking _disaster_.” 

The last thing you remember clearly is the feeling of his fingers working wonders on your face and the grip of your powers finally loosening around the minds of all your subjects. 

It’s going to be alright. 

  


* * *

  


“It seemed dumb,” Karkat admits, sitting on a corner of the ablution trap and ever so slowly working the makeup out of your skin. “I mean, I shouldn’t bug you if there isn’t really anything to say, we’re both busy as all fuck anyway.” 

“You can all up and bug a motherfucking brother any damn time you well please to, bro,” you purr, as his thumb brushes over a cheekbone and reveals a greenish bruise halfway done healing, the constant pressure an odd sensation you don’t know how to react to. “Even if it’s just to say fuck all.” 

“I know,” Karkat whispers, instead of asking about the bruise or who might have gotten close enough to score a hit like that, and you’re so glad because it hurts so bad, to lie to your little pale miracle star – though not enough to ever stop, when need arises or you feel like it, admittedly – even if you know he’ll never figure it out. “But I hate feeling dumb, I promised myself I’d call as soon as something happened, but nothing ever did, so I just. You know. Waited til now. I’m sorry.” 

You shift about, lying on your side and curling around him not unlike a slitherbeast, so you can better nuzzle against his hands, purring loudly in the back of your throat. Karkat snorts in amusement, burying his face into your neck, and relaxes in that unique way of his, by degrees, if he were peeling the layers of stress and annoyance one by one, until all that’s left is the warmth beneath it all. This is what makes everything else worth it, the fact he bares himself to you like this and you can feel his mind slowly going quiet and at ease, in the edge of your awareness. You could destroy him, when he’s like this, mind and body and soul, but you won’t. And whether he knows it or not, what matters is that he does it anyway, putting himself wholly at your mercy even though you have none. 

“Things go and make themselves happen for a reason, best friend,” you tell him, when he’s gone lax enough you’re sure the words will reach him properly. “That’s the miraculousness of the whole damn thing, that, that the reason ain’t no sense at all, just the way it should be.” 

“You know what’s dumb?” Karkat says, tracing the glowing swirl of ink along your collarbone, “I’m not afraid of the Helmsman anymore.” You make an inquisitive noise in the back of your throat, because fear is your thing, your motherfucking hatchright, the currency with which your kingdom was bought and sold and buried and rebuilt. “I should be, I used to be. No troll should have that much power, and not one with such a fucking grudge against life itself. But I can’t be afraid of him anymore, because every time I see him, there’s Eridan somewhere nearby, holding his hand or tugging him along or nagging him about shit. And if you saw the way he looks at Eridan, Gamzee, it’s like he’s staring at the center of the fucking universe.” 

“Wiggling tongues’d say that’s how I up and get my gazing upon your face,” and you don’t mean that to sound so grim, but it does, and isn’t it funny how it’s always like that, the sweetest things you say are always also the sharpest, Messiahs be praised. “Bleeding pale will do that to a motherfucker, no matter who he might up and be thinking he is.” 

“I’m worried about them,” Karkat goes on, as if he hadn’t heard, because he’s got many things boiling in his guts, writhing like maggots, and that’s why he’s here with you, to purge them out and let himself be at peace. “More about Eridan, than the Helmsman, really. The old man can do whatever he fucking wants, and he does, and he knows damn well there’s no one out there who could stop him. But Eridan had been doing so well… Terezi hadn’t asked about him in _sweeps_. Feferi says they made peace, but what if he goes and gets stupid ideas in his head? The more I look at them together, the more I’m starting to think he might be the only thing standing between the Helmsman and the rest of the galaxy. What if the dumb fucking idiot decides to try and use that for leverage?” 

You don’t mean to, you really don’t, but you burst out laughing all the same. You know this is eating Karkat whole, inside out, but once the giggle crawls itself free of your throat, you melt into a honking, cackling mess because it’s just so _funny_. 

You only manage to control yourself because Karkat gives you a wounded look that kills the mirth on the spot. You reach out to rub his shoulders back into pliant softness, shooshing him as you trail reverent kisses along the side of his face. 

“Ain’t no mockery going on, I swear, but you shouldn’t worry your pretty head none, best friend,” you push the hair off his brow and press your forehead to his, so you can stare into those vibrant rubies he’s got in the sockets instead of eyes. “Lil’ fish bitch ain’t stepping off line none anymore, never again.” 

“Don’t call him that,” Karkat snaps back, almost on reflex, before his expression crunches up into a very ugly scowl that doesn’t give even when you try to smooth it down with your thumbs. “And how the fuck do you know that? Have you been threatening my matesprit again?” 

“Don’t need to, bro, don’t need to no more,” you grin, thumbing along his lower lip, full by itself and even fuller when he pouts. “You went and trimmed his claws so damn well, motherfucker up and felt you tore them clean off. Now he ain’t gonna use what he don’t know it’s there, so it don’t matter what happens, he can still remember cradling the motherfucking bleeding stumps. He’ll be remembering til the day he up and dies, the little shit.” 

“It’s not—“ 

“You like him better, ‘cause he’s tame,” you say, because he has to hear it and he doesn’t want to, and when Karkat Vantas doesn’t want to do something, you’re the only creature in the wide damn universe who can contest it. “You wanted him wild, when you didn’t know no better, because him wild nearly broke you in half. And now you don’t want to remember you up and broke his spine yourself, best friend, only that he ain’t used to be that docile and maybe he won’t stay that way.” Karkat opens his mouth to retort something, outrage making his cheeks flush. “Either it’s true, and you can trust him to not bite your hand and feed the fingers to his psionic bitch, or it’s false, and you ought to live waiting for the knife in your back.” 

“Shut up,” Karkat snaps, more gut-wrenching sobbing than red-eyed fury choking up his voice. “ _I love him._ ” 

“Don’t you see that’s the funniest part, best friend?” You giggle, high pitched and delirious. “That’s the damn hilarious thing, motherfucker up and loves you too, a brother is fairly sure.” You leer, unable to stop yourself. “You’re still his greatest fear, can feel it all the way to here.” 

“No creepy fearmorgering shit, Gamzee,” Karkat warns you, eyes narrowed and jaw set, “definitely no creepy fearmorgering shit about Eridan.” 

“You’re derailing,” you point out, just because you can. 

“You’re doing the fucking creepy clown shtick thing again, except there’s no one else here to believe it and I’m too fucking tired to indulge it.” Karkat rubs off another goop of greasepaint off your face, far more forceful than he usually does. You let him and don’t get all hurt about it, because you started the salty shit and you probably deserve it. “I’d never hurt him, Gamzee, that’s the problem.” 

You deserve so many terrible things and the greatest mirthful secret you know is that you’ll never get your due. You lean in to kiss Karkat’s mouth, soft and sweet, and kiss him because he’s beautiful and sparkling like the diamond that bounds you two close. He’s soft and glimmering light you want to eat whole so it’ll shine bright inside the dark you keep so close. 

“When I was being all dumb and heartbroken, best friend, you sat me down and told me like it was,” you say, the most serious, soothing voice you can muster, drowning the laughter under the weight of all the pity that you have hoarded for Karkat’s sake. “You sat me down right here, remember? Took my hand and told me flat out my winged little miracle bro didn’t love me like I did. Now I up and get to do the same, even if I don’t want to do it none.” You rub a thumb over Karkat’s lips, over and over again, like a promise and a curse. “You ought to make a choice.” 

There’s a moment where he just sits there, in your arms, and you think he’s going to argue back and hide behind his big, loud words. 

“I know,” he says, hoarse, voice trembling under the weight of the truth you just imparted. “I just don’t want to make the wrong one.” 

You soften your laugh, make it liquid as you press it into the side of his neck. 

“We ain’t grubs no more, best friend,” you croon, really gently, dripping pale into him like there’s water and grime dripping off your back, only you hope your pale won’t end up down the drain like that, “whatever choice you make, you get to make it right, on account of it being motherfucking yours.” 

  


* * *

  


You run your fingers through Karkat’s hair, over and over again, only vaguely aware you could just crush his skull between thumb and forefinger without much effort, and instead tilt your head back, stretching your awareness across the _Messiah_ and into the _Leviathan_ , zooming in onto the biggest black hole of fear in it. 

Fish bitch’s mind is like a banquet of the stuff, five stars, high class exclusive delights you don’t quite feed on but enjoy regardless. 

Grinning, you set out to work. 

A long time ago, when you were a grub still sitting on the sand and trying to piece together who and what you are, you made a deal. You like deals, they’re simple and fun and make sense, unlike everything else that hurts your pan and puts your guts to boil. She gave you a truth in exchange for a promise. She took you there, to the Great Undoing, to the banquet of the gods, and showed you the Messiahs in all their glory as they tore down the world in half and made it anew with their bare hands. 

She told you to follow your whims, to not question the truths in your pan, and to make the world into whatever you wanted. In return, she only asked to let one single, solitary wreck of a troll alone. To live or die by his own doing, untouched by your fearmorgering, no matter what. You have been tempted, in the past. You have been tempted every time Karkat has cried over him and his stupid nonsense. You’ve felt the urge to reach out and scramble his pan until he’s nothing but a docile whore to keep Karkat amused, and each time you’ve mastered yourself and let things be, because what does he – what does _Karkat_ – even matter, in the great scale of things? 

So you let his fears fester on their own, for him to tame them or be tamed by them at his own leisure, and instead follow the threads that connect him to others, who are even more insignificant and unprotected by the mercy of the Handmaid, and sink your fangs into their souls instead. They’re pawns on the board, part of a game between you and yourself, but it’s okay, because you know how it ends and you won’t let it end before it’s time. 

The old troll sleeping at his side is like an open book for you to page through, his fears so old they’ve been buried under resignation. You keep true to your word and don’t leave one smudge on fish bitch’s mind, instead taking the Helmsman’s resignation and crumbling it in a fist as you drag up the fear and the rage and the ghost of wires and scalpels until he’s screaming his torn throat raw. 

He’s just like Sollux, in that regard, so focused on the physical power they have, they forget the truth strength is in those who can take their minds. You’ve never let anyone know how strong you are, or how much you can see, because part of the fun of watching things fall where they may is to push them up and off the edge and have no one know it’s you who staged it all. 

“Karkat,” you say, sharply, as you jolt your beloved back to the land of the living. 

Your eyes are clear and unassuming when he wakes, the lights of your power dutifully kept away behind a mask of concern you don’t feel at all. 

“I’m trying to sleep you—“ 

The _Messiah_ is rocked to the core, as the creature inside the _Leviathan_ rages and panics and loses control of the gargantuan power at his disposal. You think even if you had a choice to torment the fish bitch directly, you still go for his moirail instead, because you feel a keen disdain for those with power who refuse to use it. 

“Sollux!” Karkat cries out, desperate, and the screen on the far side of your respite block comes alive with images of the drama inside the bowels of his ship. 

Together, you watch softcore pale porn happen in real time, as the Helmsman has his lost fucks found and tenderly tucked back into place, until he’s crying and trembling in his moirail’s arms. Karkat is shaking like a leaf about to fall, at your side, and he pulls away when you try to pat his back. 

“Did you do this?” He demands, because he loves you like a planet loves the star it orbits, but he knows you and that makes _you_ love him, for all you lie without a sliver of shame. 

“No,” you say, in that tone Karkat can’t deny no matter what he tries, coloring your voice with hurt to make him doubt himself and feel like shit. It tears you inside to have to maim him so, but he needs it to be happy, in the end. “A brother wouldn’t up and put you in danger like that, best friend.” 

“I’m sorry,” Karkat whispers, crumbling into your side, convinced of your innocence because he wants to believe it more than anything else in the world, even if he’s no longer naïve enough to not doubt it. “I’m sorry, I’m just…” 

“If you order them to blow up the ship, they’d be gone,” you say, not giving him time to gather his wits, letting his own fear make his mind malleable to your suggestions, without any light show required. “The _Messiah_ can outrun the explosion, get rid of the motherfucking worries in one go.” 

The beauty of it is that he considers it, if only for a moment. 

“No more psionic bastard putting the threat all up your gill,” you croon, rubbing small circles on his shoulder as he buries his face into your side, “no more fish bitch making you doubt where you stand and when he’s gonna up and go fuck up all shit.” 

Karkat’s silent as his breathing returns to normal. You wonder if he’s realized you lied to him, if he’s angry. You smile to yourself when he presses closer to you, clinging to your side like the miraculous ball of joy and warmth he is. 

“No,” he says, calm and steady and clear-headed, “that’s not how this is going to work.” He looks up at you with infinite pity in his eyes, and if you were a lesser troll or had more of a conscience, you’d feel like shit for being who you are. “I know you’re trying to help, I do, but mass murder is not how I solve things.” 

“Mass murder is motherfucking efficient, is all I’m saying,” you grin lopsidedly at him, and it makes him smile a strained, sad smile. “Dead men tell no tales, best friend.” 

“I know,” he laughs, soft and sweet, “but the thing is, there’re still tales I want him to tell me.” 

You laugh, then, and Karkat laughs with you, but you’re pretty certain he has no idea your laughter comes from entirely different places. It’s okay though. You know how it ends. You know a lot more than anyone gives you credit for. You know the truth of the faith and the truth of the world, and that everything else is just pretense. 

“Then keep the bitch,” you say, laughter threatening to break through your voice, “and tell the world to go fuck itself on my clubs.” 

Karkat laughs and laughs, and you goad him until he forgets to ask if there’s anything on your mind. There always is, but despite the serendipitous chain tying you two in place, not all of it is for him to know. You’ll send him back to his ship in a few nights, content and relaxed, and then you’ll smear your face with greasepaint and dip your fingers in blood, and keep on playing the same game you’ve designed for yourself so far. 

You might not be dead, but all your tales can’t be told, just yet. 

  


* * *

  


_The venomous old python retired to his grave now,_  
 _And all around him relatives argue for their fair share_  
 _'He promised me that when he was alive!'_  
 _But come on, everyone knows dead men tell no tales._

~ Hatsune Miku, “Hold, Release, Rakshasa and Carcasses.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [Askblog for this verse.](http://requisitionforms.tumblr.com/)


End file.
